WRIGHT: Some folks here clearly have their doubts President Obama is going to be able to fix the health care system. Some worry about big government programs, others that they'll pay higher taxes in the end. But Democrats and Republicans alike here told us they hope he can fix it because something needs to be done.

  Right, obama with no medical training is going to 'fix' healthcare to satisfy the needs for 300,000,000 Americans whose medical needs range from the preborn to the very elderly.  Why doesn't obama just stick to what he knows, making cars and managing banks.

I figure 85 percent of us are pretty happy with our health care and our health insurance.  So that means we need to destroy the  whole system. After there is a crisis... a manufactured one at that.

"Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink."  P.J.O'Rourke

1.  No free healthcare for illegal immigrants

2.  Cap ridiculous jury awards against malpractice and disbar any attorney who brings more than three lawsuits (ones thrown out of court) in their career.

3.  Cut taxes on the American taxpayer.

Those are just a few ideas.

Angry White Dude

www.angrywhitedude.c...

Get government, at ALL levels, the hell out of it completely.

Whatever problems that still exist will right themselves rather quickly.

If the government "educated" sheeple of this country are f'ing stupid enough to allow the grossly incompetent, affirmative action-hiring federal government to take over the best health care system on the planet, then they will richly deserve what is coming their way.

I don't give a rat's ass anymore, as America has become too f'ing stoopid to survive for much longer.

-Dave

Obama's health care "reform" plan is to blow up the building in order to fix a leak in the roof-Herman Cain

Of course ABC endorses obambicare, they gave him a whole day of free infomercials.

Obama is sweating and hasn't addressed a single question. He seems really off his gAme. Maybe we can get an open thread on this.

I had to see some of the infomercial. Obama's answers are his regular boilerplate. What is broken, anecdotal stories, lofty statements about what "We" will do. Nothing about the details, no answers on the cost-benefit relationship, no answer on how to borrow enough money to pay for it.

The audience looks like a cross section of a wine-tasting, with a few "others" thrown in. A pretty healthy group of people, it certainly does not look like a cross section of the patients one finds at the ER on a Saturday morning. I wonder what that group would be 'asting' the President about their lack of insurance coverage and green cards as they tell him they are not "happy with their plan". 

One more thing. Obama is really slick. He can sound like an expert on medicine, health administration, the science of global warming (atmospheric chemistry!), economics, and many other fields. He is almost Godlike! 

In the case that you think your Republican representatives are sitting on their hands, please read this health care counter proposal:

The GOP Can Stop ObamaCare
The public is in no mood for drastic changes in current coverage.

• By KARL ROVE

It's extremely unlikely that Republicans will be able to pass their own health-care plan in this Congress. But in politics you can't beat something with nothing, so it is critical that the GOP offers an alternative to President Barack Obama's government-run monstrosity.

Americans will listen more closely to Republicans if they make empirical and specific arguments against Mr. Obama's attempted government takeover of the nation's health system. But they must also offer proposals that families, small-businesspeople and health-care providers will applaud.

President Barack Obama before delivering remarks on health care reform at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association on Monday in Chicago.

Fortunately, Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Richard Burr of North Carolina, and Reps. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Devin Nunes of California have devised a plan that will likely appeal to anyone interested in making health insurance more affordable and portable.

Their proposal -- called the Patients' Choice Act -- is to leave in place the tax deduction companies receive for providing employees with health insurance and to create a "Medi-Choice" tax rebate that will give individuals $2,200 and families $5,700 to spend on health insurance.

The rebate will make health insurance more affordable, especially for young people. It also will make health insurance portable, which will free people from being locked into jobs they hate because they are afraid of losing their health insurance.

The Coburn-Ryan plan also helps the hard-to-insure and chronically ill because it shares their risk across all insurance companies, providing lower premiums than they might find now. It would help those in Medicaid because they receive private insurance rather than being forced into a one-size-fits-all government program in which doctors are increasingly refusing to participate.

Before Karl became known as "The Architect" of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.

The House GOP also formed a Health Care Solutions Group that unveiled proposals yesterday. The group wanted to make health care more affordable, expand availability, and promote healthier life choices. It did this by proposing two-dozen ways to improve existing law to make it easier and more cost-effective to buy health insurance.

One proposal is to give families who purchase their own insurance a tax benefit similar to the one companies get for providing health benefits. Another proposal is to pass medical liability reforms that will reduce costly junk lawsuits. Still another would allow small businesses to team up to buy insurance at a group discount. The group also wants to allow families to save money tax-free for a wide range of health expenses and permit children to stay on their parents' policies until age 25.

Under the group's proposals, Medicaid beneficiaries would get the flexibility to choose private coverage, rather than being locked into a government-run program. The group is also calling for stepping up efforts to detect and punish Medicare and Medicaid fraud, which costs an estimated $60 billion a year.

Individual Republicans are also stepping forward with health-reform ideas, such as creating a national health-insurance market that would allow Americans to buy insurance across state lines. Sens. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) and Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) have offered other ideas, including expanding community health centers.

This is the first time congressional Republicans as a group have been comfortable talking about health care. It may be the product of necessity, but it is also necessary to get a robust debate on health-care reform.

Republican efforts will be helped by a recent Congressional Budget Office report that found that Sen. Ted Kennedy's health-care reform would cost at least $1 trillion over the next 10 years and still leave 36 million Americans uninsured (it may be slightly more once all the details are released). Estimates for the health-care bill that the Senate Finance Committee is drafting with help from the White House are coming in around $1.6 trillion over 10 years.

As the debate now shifts from broad generalities to the specifics of how health-care reform would work and how the government will pay for it, the GOP has an opportunity to stop the nationalization of the health-care industry. The more scrutiny it gets, the less appealing Obama-Care will become. And the more Democrats have to talk about creating a new value-added tax or junk food taxes to pay for it, the more Americans will recoil.

Republican credibility on health care depends on whether the party offers positive alternatives that build on the strengths of American medicine. As long as the choice was between reform and the status quo, the public was likely to go with the reformers. But if the debate is whether to go with costly, unnecessary reforms or with common-sense changes, then Republicans have a chance to appeal to fiscally conservative independents and Democrats and win this one. It is still possible to stop ObamaCare in its tracks. If Republicans can do that, they will win public confidence on an issue that will dominate politics for decades.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

Q. What do you call a man who ignores Doctors' advice?

A. Barack Obama

Right to Choose Best Care
In ABC News Health Care Forum, President Answers Questions About Reform
By JAKE TAPPER and KAREN TRAVERS

President Obama struggled to explain today whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people — like the president himself — wouldn’t face.

“For God's sake, somebody tell Obama that a TRILLION is one MILLION MILLION!!!!”

Since Risky behavior is a major cost to health insurance...we stop covering those people.  If you decide that you want to sleep around, and then contract a STD such as AIDS, you are on your own.  The drugs to treat AIDS are not cheap.  They can run up to $25,000.00 a MONTH, and with the quality of drugs out there, your life can be prolonged for 15/20/25 years. (You do the math)  Now since insurance companies are not allowed to drop you from thier roles if you contract AIDS, they have to pay the costs of these drugs.  Last time I looked, insurance companies were not in the business of losing money, so they raise thier rates to everyone.  If you didn't have insurance when you contracted AIDS, then you turn to the government, and they pay for it.  Since I am the government (well, my pocketbook anyway)  I pay for it.  All we have to do is deny coverage to these people, and we can save BILLIONS every year.  I"m not talking about denying coverage to people who contract AIDS through no fault of thier own, (i.e. Children, rape victims), but if you want to sleep around or shoot up, don't ask me to pay for it when your personal actions endanger your life.  

It may sound cold and heartless,  but I choose not to engage in these risky behaviors, and more that likely will not contract a STD of any kind, let alone AIDS. 

It really irks me when a liberal tells me that I have no right to judge them and thier behavior, but I have EVERY right to do it when it costs me money.

 I'll get off my soapbox now. 

"An Ethical man knows it's wrong to cheat on his wife, a Moral man won't do it"  Ducky-NCIS

jessieH  As I have said before, name one thing the govt. has fixed or repaired...........                         The govt. is the problem. R. Reagan